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Comment by alanh | Hacker News Reader

Reminder: Google paid for an ad campaign with this gist: A father creates a Gmail account for his daughter when she is born, and sends her important photos and mementos as she grows up. Sweet. Reality: At least one person tried this in real life, and the child's account was automatically deleted without recourse.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/12/18/2046221/why-google-...

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You can do this with a regular Gmail account. The kid just can’t log into it until they are 13 or older.

Google also now offers child Google accounts for kids under 13, which are limited and tied to a parent’s account through an app called Family Link. This is how you can set up a Chromebook for a kid, for example.

This limit of age 13 is not arbitrary by Google; it’s their way of complying with a U.S. federal law called COPPA.

It’s not arbitrary within the US, it’s arbitrary everywhere else, where the US law doesn’t apply.

Not when google is a US company.

US law does not apply for people living in the US. These people have no rights.

Do you mean outside of the US?

Google is a US company so US law always applies to it.

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1350409?hl=en

It's clearly not just US that they are not arbitrary. You could argue for countries not listed above it is arbitrary but it is clearly a legally safer option for a US corporation, so not really arbitrary.

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